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Show pESUMECTION IVER y':'; WILLIAM i;Wi BYRON f,, , YVK COPY RIGHT-WILLIAM BYRON MOWERY W.N. U. SERVICE CHAPTER XVI Continued 16 He took no chances that the message mes-sage might be a fake. With the infinite in-finite caution which had marked every ev-ery step of his negotiations with Warren, he wirelessed the bank directly di-rectly for confirmation, and also wirelessed instructions to an old Winnipeg lawyer who had been his friend and his father's friend. Within three hours the bank's reply re-ply came. DEPOSIT AUTHENTIC STOP MONEY YOURS WITHOUT RESTRICTION STOP DEPOSIT MADE BY DRAFT NOT BY CHECK THEREFORE NO POSSIBILITY OF PAYMENT BEING STOPPED Toward eight o'clock that evening Corporal Northup came down from the signal corps station, bringing Craig the lawyer's wirelessed reply. The old attorney stated that he had investigated the deposit from every conceivable angle and that Craig was absolutely safe. With Sam and Poleon as his bodyguards, body-guards, Craig went across Resurrection Resur-rection to Warren's cabin, taking along the claim papers which he had been holding ready. It was dark by the time they had completed the transaction. Across the desk Craig handed Warren the last document, signed and witnessed. wit-nessed. "The lake is now yours, Warren," he said, "provided you remember my warning and don't play your joker." He turned on his heel and strode out of the cabin. With his two dependable bodyguards body-guards he started back across the river. A fluffy six-inch snow, probably prob-ably the last of the year, had fallen that day; but the sky had faired off, and on the northwest horizon lingered lin-gered a beautiful orange afterglow of the sun. At his cabin he unlocked the door he kept his place locked up tight now and turned to his two partners. part-ners. "Poleon, you step down and visit Patricia and tell her the news. Stay with her for a cup of tea she's having hav-ing a lonesome time of it these days. Sam, you go down to the Den and send up half a dozen men to watch my cabin while the dark lasts. It'll only be two or three hours. I want to be guarded every minute till Warren and his outfit have pulled up and left. Don't tell the men anything about this deaL I'll tell 'em myself." He went inside his cabin, barred the door, stepped across to his table and lit a candle. As the tiny flame flickered and brightened, he heard a slight noise behind him a scraping sound like the shuffle of a shoe-pac on the slab floor. Somebody was in his cabin! His hand shot down to the black automatic in his table drawer. He grabbed out the weapon and whirled around. As he whirled, a heavy stick of stove wood came careening out of the semi-darkness and crashed him full in the face, breaking break-ing his nose, breaking out one of his teeth, and stunning him like a hammer blow between the eyes. From the wood-box behind the stove a dark figure leaped up, swung at him with an iron-tipped ski staff, and took him a paralyzing blow on the head. He slumped against the table, reeling, fighting against a horrible hor-rible blackness that was engulfing him. Out of the flickering shadows at the far side of his cabin, four other figures came lunging at him like wolves springing upon a kill, and among them were Lupe Chiwaughi-mi Chiwaughi-mi and 'Teeste. With his last gasp of strength Craig lifted the automatic, to shoot at those lunging figures; but the man with the ski staff swung again and struck his arm; and the gun went clattering hallway across the cabin. CHAPTER XVII On the morning after the Chi-waughimis Chi-waughimis trapped Craig, a prospector pros-pector came past Patricia's cabin. "Have you heard the news, Miss Pat? They's a plane down, atween here and Smith. It left Smith yesterday yes-terday 'round ten and should've got here in the afternoon, but it ain't showed up yet." "Who was flying it?" Patricia asked. Most of the northern pilots were good friends of hers and dropped in at her cabin for a sociable so-ciable cup of tea whenever they made the Bay. "Pilot Odron was a-flying it Him and Mechanic Straus. They jest had one passenger. She was this woman that, uh, they say is Craig's wife." "Rosalie?" "Yeh. Anyhow, that's what I heard." Patricia ran up to the Mounted Police building to find out the truth from Dennis Northup. "It's so," Northup informed her. "Rosalie is with that ship. Four planes out of Smith and two out of Rae are hunting for It Odron must've run into that snowstorm yesterday. He had wireless reports on it and was afraid of it when he left Smith." "Why on earth did an experienced pilot like Odron ever head into so bad a snowstorm?" "Lovett ordered him to, that's whyl" Northup snapped angrily. "Maybe Odron managed to get down safe when he hit the storm, Dennis. He's an awf'ly good flyer." "Yes, it's probably just a forced landing. They'll likely find him somewhere along the route, with a broken ski or something like that." They talked for a few minutes about the search. Presently Northup North-up asked, "By the way, Patricia, Where's Craig?" "Why, at his cabin, isn't he?" "No, and he's not down at the Den. D'you have any idea where he's gone?" "He wasn't planning to go anywhere any-where that I know about. Do you mean he's not here at the Bay at all?" Northup realized that Patricia knew no more than he about Craig'i strange disappearance. Not wishing wish-ing to alarm her, when possibly there was no occasion for alarm, he said casually: "Craig must be up to something or other. I guess he's kept this move completely to himself." Patricia thought no more about the matter just then, but when she got back to her cabin she began wuiiaeruig wnere raig naa gone, and she became uneasy. If he had planned to leave the Bay, surely he would have told her. Through Poleon Po-leon and Northup he always ept her Informed of everything he did. soned; and so Craig was entirely safe. At mid morning she stepped across to the community house and made inquiry among the prospectors. prospec-tors. None of them had seen Craig since the previous evening. Poleon and Sam were gone also, they said. The two men had left at dawn, without saying where they were going. go-ing. This news about Poleon and Sam relieved Patricia considerably. They were with Craig, she reasoned; rea-soned; and so Craig was safe. The prospectors, however, were badly upset by Craig's disappearance. disappear-ance. From some mysterious source a rumor had sprung up that he had sold his radium lake for a big price; and they were all on edge to know whether the report was true. While Patricia was stilling the fears of the men, a plane came winging in from the south and lit in the mouth of Resurrection. Somebody Some-body called out that the ship was one of the Fort Rae searching planes. Most of the prospectors left the Den and hurried down upon the river. Patricia went into her office, watched through the window, saw the crowd gather about the ship. Pilot Leo Sneddon opened the cabin door, stepped down upon a ski strut. His shoulders sagged; he took off his helmet and hung his head as he spoke a few words to the nearest men. "He's found Odron!" Patricia cried to herself. Sneddon's bowed head, the awed silence that came over the crowd, meant that the news he brought was tragic news. In her cabin, half an hour later, Sneddon told her about his sorrowful sorrow-ful discovery, after he had reported it to Northup. "I left Rae at four this morning," Sneddon recounted, "and started north, following the Larion river. That's the air route we all take to Great Desolation. I'd reached the big lake, I'd come within sight of the Bay and almost stopped hunting, when I looked down at a little wooded island, and there there it was." The island was a mile offshore, Sneddon said, and only nine miles south of Resurrection. He had landed near-by, taken a short look at the wreckage, and then whipped on in to report. "Flying blind in the snowstorm, he hit square into the pines, broke off a wing, smashed the fuselage, and then crashed head-on against a little rock wall. I found Straus and Rosalie down under those pines where he first hit, but Bing Odron was still In the ship when it cracked; and and the gas tanks caught, and . . . God, there wasn't anything left but the black twisted metal-work!" Odron dead, Rosalie dead Patricia Patri-cia could hardly realize it She could feel no joy in being freed from that hateful injunction. Not when the freedom had cost Rosalie and Straus and Odron their lives. Near four o'clock that afternoon the sled party which Corporal Northup had dispatched to the wooded island got back to Resurrection, Resurrec-tion, bringing their tarpaulin-wrapped tarpaulin-wrapped burdens. After the sensation-seekers had cleared away from the Mounted Police Po-lice building, Patricia forced herself her-self to go up there. She felt that she had to go, out of a woman's respect re-spect for another woman, out of atonement for the bitter feelings which she had harbored toward the girl who had been Craig's wife. Dennis Northup took her into the room and pointed at the smaller of the two biers and silently left her. Patricia moved over to the bier and looked down at the white-shrouded figure. With a strange sadness inside of her, Patricia bent down and lifted the sheet away from Rosalie's face. The girl had been spared disfigurement disfigure-ment in the tragedy. She appeared to be lying In a calm peaceful sleep from which she might wake at any moment and open her dreamy-lidded dreamy-lidded eyes and look up. With the sunshaft just touching her golden hair and throwing a warm light across her features, she was haunt-ingly haunt-ingly beautiful as lovely as the picture pic-ture of the living girl beside the sundial at her Vancouver home. Before turning away she bent down, out of a great pity for Rosalie, Rosa-lie, and touched her lips to the girl's forehead . . . As she worked In her office that evening, the prospectors kept coming com-ing to the doorway and inquiring whether she had heard anything from Craig. The question jarred on Patricia every time a man asked it All that day, as the hours passed and Craig's strange absence lengthened, length-ened, her uneasiness had grown, and vague suspicions had begun preying on her. The sun finally sank below the northwest horizon. Under the trees outside her window the purple shadows shad-ows deepened. From somewhere up the lake shore came the eleven-noted eleven-noted hooting of a great horned owL The weird sepulchral call snapped Patricia's hold upon herself. Flinging Fling-ing her work aside, she hurried out of the office, out of the Den. Ever since that nightmare evening eve-ning up Resurrection when the Chi-waughimls Chi-waughimls had come so near murdering mur-dering Craig, she had known that a sinister shadow hung over him. Many nights, before going to bed, she had gone up the little hollow - S " v : "Why, at His Cabin, Isn't He?" and seen the dim candleglow through his blanketed window and had been reassured. New, in her anxiety, she slipped back through the dark trees and up toward his cabin, hardly knowing why she was going there or what she intended doing. As she passed the granite boulder, boul-der, she was astonished to see the cabin door slightly ajar and a light inside. Her heart leaped with the thought that Craig was back. She flew to the door, looked in. The person was not Craig but Dennis Northup. Over at Craig's work table he was bending down, a flashlight in his hand, carefully examining ex-amining the floor and a stick of wood near the stove. She stepped inside. "Dennis! What're you doing here?" Northup whirled around. "Oh! . . . Why hello, Patricia. Why I, uh" he snapped off the flash and sauntered over toward her "I was just bringing' back a coupla books that Craig lent me." "What were you looking for, there on the floor?" Patricia demanded. Northup backed up to the table, to head her off as she tried to go around him and see for herself. "Nothing's there, Patricia. I, uh, knocked something off of Craig's table and I was looking to find it Please, girl you're excited, imagining imag-ining tilings. I don't blame you; this has been a hard day for us all. Let me take you back to your " Patricia seized the flash from his hand, snapped it on; and before Northup could stop her she had flipped the spot of light upon the floor where he had been looking. For a horrified moment she stared down ... On the stick of wood and on the floor near the table leg there were two big splotches of dark red. "All right," Ncrthup said sharply, taking the only sensible course. "now that you've seen a part of it and the worst part, let's see it alll For heaven's sake don't jump to any crazy conclusion. Give me the flash. Here's a coupla small stains on the table. There's one on the side of the wood-box. And one on the end of that ski staff. I found Craig's automatic lying over there under the edge of the bunk." He kept up a rapid fire of talk, to draw her thoughts away from those two splotches. "That's every scrap and clue I've discovered here, and I've been over this cabin three times today with a fine-tooth comb. You can look around for yourself. You don't wish? All right Want me to tell you what happened here last night? All right I will." He made her sit down in Craig's chair, and drew up another for himself. him-self. Patricia was white and shaky, but valiantly she held herself together to-gether and forced herself not to look at those sinister stains. "Last night" Northup said, speaking straight from the shoulder, "while Sam was down at the Den and Poleon was with you, those Chi-waughlmis Chi-waughlmis had their chance at Craig. They got Into this cabin by jimmying that north window over there. Craig kept the door locked. They were inside when he came In. They must have got in while Craig was across the river signing those papers. "In spite of these splotches, I'm convinced they didn't kill Craig. Lovett hasn't the nerve to go that far. Another reason, Craig saved Teeste Chiwaughlmi's life. With Lupe that wouldn't count for much, but those other four would probably balk at outright murder." "I'll tell you what did happen here last night They overpowered Craig, after a fight that' d explain those blood stains; for all we know, it may ba Chiwaughlml blood I say, they overpowered him and frisked him away from the Bay. They've got him somewhere, holding hold-ing him a prisoner. That explains why they've disappeared too." Patricia's black cloud of fear lifted a little. She believed North-up's North-up's argument He spoke as one who knew. "As for Poleon and Sam," Northup North-up went on, "when they discovr ered last evening that Craig was missing, Poleon sized up the situation situa-tion correctly that Craig had been frisked away. Poleon is nobody's fool in matters like this. He didn't tell you, of course. He didn't tell me, as he should have. He set out on his own hook, he and Sam, to follow the Chiwaughimis " TO.. Ann' T-l t .. TT. uu, uia, .au i. cuiua. J.J.C and Sam stayed here at camp till dawn." "Well, certainly. They couldn't track the Chiwaughimis in the dark, could they? They had to wait till daybreak. Then they made a big circle around camp and picked up those tracks in this new snow." - "But why should Warren have Craig kidnaped, Dennis? What can he possibly gain from it?" "Heavens, a plentyl Don't you see that when Craig has been missing for several days, no word from him, none of that money available, all these May licenses expiring, these claims lapsing right and left Why girl, those men are going to bust wide open! Poor devils, they're all keyed up, down there at the Den. If Lovett can keep Craig out of sight for one week, this field will be his. Don't you get it now?" "Oh-oo!" Patricia breathed. Northup added, "Unless I miss my guess, Lovett intends to have not only this field but you too." "To have me?" Patricia echoed. "Look. Suppose I hadn't told you this. Suppose you'd waited here day after day for Craig, not knowing know-ing where he was, why he'd disappeared, dis-appeared, whether he was alive or dead. What would you be doing after a few days of that?" "I I'd be driven crazy," Patricia Patri-cia blurted out. "Well, at any rate you'd be willing will-ing to do just about anything to save Craig's life. Lovett knows it. He's going to bargain with you. He's going to force you back to Chicago. I don't know the exact terms he'll offer, but I do know he intends to pry you loose from Craig. That's the other barrel of his double-barrel shotgun. Now d'you see what he stands to gain by this kidnaping?" Patricia slowly nodded. Warren's whole deed and purpose were clear to her, after Northup's explanation. Facing defeat such as she and Craig had faced all winter. Warren had seized a criminal weapon to save himself. "What're you doing to to find Craig, Dennis?" she asked, trying hard to keep her voice steady. "He's in danger his very life because be-cause of Lupe. We've got to find him, free him." "I've put out a coupla lines," Northup said. "Over across the river I've got two Tinneh scouts posted, watching Lovett's place. If any messenger comes or goes between be-tween him and the Chiwaughimis, I'll know about it, and I can trail the fellow. If one of Lovett's Bel-lancas Bel-lancas leaves the Bay, I'll have Sneddon get into the air, and we'll see where that ship goes. Those are two bets." (TO BE CONT1WED) |